Hello fellow Wax Porhetoric life travelers,
It’s been a very very trying couple months. Trying to celebrate life as we watch a loved one slowly leaving us. Life as I know it is soon going to change forever. 95% of the time I’m ok…we (“we” being myself, my mother, my family, my friends) talk about the wonderful woman that is my mother, what we’re taking from all of this, and just living life day by day. There’s no grim talk, no “woe is me” whining, no complaining. Even in these times we’re able to appreciate what we’ve got. What a great lesson my mother taught me…
As we deal with this nasty thing called cancer it’s had us all learning as much as possible. There are many theories as to why cancer is more wide-spread now, what we can do to combat it, how we should life life, etc. If you recall the early days of this whole mess (early July) we had looked into the Kushi Institute and macrobiotic diets. The theory behind these diets is that we need to get our bodies back into an alkaline state. With our modern diets we’re more acidic and cancer cells thrive in that state. We obviously didn’t go that route…we already had enough poking and prodding at the hospital (not to mention the outrageous hospital bills for the unemployed. She can’t get Medicaid either…I’ll stop now before I get irked at the system) and didn’t want a whole new round of some stranger in the house while we grapple with what has just hit us. I would have been curious to see if it would have worked out or not but it was just too much, too fast to work with.
So life went on. I have to admit, the theory behind a macrobiotic diet seems pretty sound to me. I mean, look at all the climb in numbers for so many different diseases…diabetes, cancer, allergies, all sorts of things experiencing great growth. What’s changed in the past few decades? Well we certainly eat like crap. Loads of fat, sugar, refined foods, etc. That CAN’T be good for our body.
The next interesting diet thing I noticed was that animal protein causes the body to move to having our cancer trigger cells make the change and move on to propagate throughout the body. It was suggested to go on a diet without meat and in doing so we can once again get our body back to an alkaline state but also keep those cancer cells from becoming the little bastards ha they are. Now…I’ll admit. I do love me a good steak. Or burger. Ok, I like bacon too. And fish. And turkey. And carne asada burritos. And nachos. And hot wings. And eggs. And cheese. And ice cream. And…ok, I think you get the point. However, when it comes to keeping that nasty crap (cancer that is) out of my body, I think I can forgo all that. I’ll also admit that I used to look at my vegan friends and go “eh! What is this? Tofu? It’s not meat!!!” but if you don’t think of it as a steak substitute but rather as another kind of food (kinda like you wouldn’t make a hamburger with tuna and expect it to taste the same).
Stess…ugh…I know for a fact it’s been tearing me up inside. I’m pretty good about managing stress…I can’t imagine how bad it would be without it. I’ve seen some pretty adverse effects in my body alone though. The cortisol has wreaked havoc on my midsection…egads! My adrenal glands were tired and worn out and I needed to get that taken care of before matters got even worse. Some fine supplements with the elimination of coffee from my diet and I was getting back on track.
I was fortunate enough to get to hop on the bike and do a bunch of rides (mmmm…25 miles of joy each time) while I was having a quick break in Omaha. That worked wonders for my stress, cleared my head, and we all know it’s good for the body. I’ve been thinking about running quite a bit lately. I used to put in a quick six miles every day before work along with my twice-weekly soccer games. However, with the knee giving me problems for a bit I had to chill on that. I did come across some interesting stuff recently though. I’ve read a good bit over the past few days about how we humans were meant to be walking around barefoot. Some highlights include the fact that by going barefoot we actually strengthen our feet, toes, arches, ankles, knees and give us proper posture. With all these advances in running shoe technology over the past few decades there still has not been a decrease in running injuries. It’s only been getting worse. Also, walking barefoot forces us to use a more natural gait (landing on the balls of our feet rather than striking heel first. There’s a whole mess of biomechanics in that…too much to put down here but if you’re truly interested you should do more research). Maybe those barefoot marathon runners are actually onto something. Guess I’ll have to do an experiment with the Vibram Five Fingers shoes (they’re like gloves for your feet…each toe gets its own spot, minimal cushion and support, etc) and let you all know how it goes.
In this thing called life, we must all remember that we’re humans. Complex systems interacting with other systems (respiratory, skeletal, digestive, endocrine, immune, muscular, and so forth). We keep changing the nature of things to improve life, yet all we’re really doing is making it worse. We add stresses to our life, we introduce unnatural foods to our bodies, we change the way we walk…
My mom is sleeping right now. I reminded her that I love her and that I always knew that she loved me and I’ve carried that with me everywhere. I suggest you do the same. You never know when life will change course so suddenly that you’ll be grappling at anything within reach to keep your head above water. The best thing I’m taking from all this is that we need to love each other and get back as close to our roots as possible.
